FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA - PAGE 2

Amnesty International USA commends Gov. George Ryan for his recent brave stance to make Illinois the first state in the nation to issue a death penalty moratorium. Gov. Ryan has shown the state, the country and the world that political leadership on the death penalty is welcomed by a public concerned about the possibility of innocent people being executed. Recent polls suggest the people of this state support his action, and political leaders across the country are supporting moratoria in their locales as well (Oregon, Philadelphia, California, Maryland)

Attempting to focus world attention on police brutality, the U.S. affiliate of Amnesty International is issuing a report Tuesday that calls on federal officials to better document excessive-force cases involving local and state police and to ensure that the officers responsible are prosecuted. The report, prompted by high-profile cases in Chicago, New York and other cities, is an attempt by Amnesty International USA to cast police brutality as an international issue as serious and prevalent as human-rights abuses.

A report released Monday by Amnesty International USA said the use of torture in China by police and other authorities is "widespread and systemic," echoing long-standing concerns about human-rights abuses and the lack of legal protection afforded to many individuals. In a report issued in Washington, the human-rights organization said it believes the range of officials resorting to torture and the circle of victims are expanding despite evidence that the government, at some levels, acknowledges it has a major problem protecting criminal suspects and others from abuse.

It's called the President's Daily Brief, or, more informally, the "threat matrix." And it could change the way President-elect Barack Obama views the world and the dangers that lie within. Obama began receiving daily intelligence reports -- the ones given to President George W. Bush -- immediately after the election. They provide a far more detailed look at terror threats around the world than he received as a senator or presidential candidate. "If ever there were proof of the existence of evil in the world, it is in the pages of these reports," former Atty.

The police haven't managed to solve it. Neither has the Mexican government. Even the poking and prodding of the international news media so far has failed to crack the eerie wall of silence surrounding the slain women of Ciudad Juarez. Now, another group is pushing for answers and, ultimately, justice in the dusty industrial town across from El Paso, Texas: artists. On Saturday, thousands of demonstrators converged on the border to march, mourn, make speeches, hold discussions and raise awareness of the hundreds of women who have gone missing and in many cases turned up dead in Ciudad Juarez and other parts of Chihuahua state.

GENEVA (Reuters) - North Korea has built a huge "security perimeter" around a camp for political prisoners, restricting movement in nearby villages as part of its "general repression" of its people, Amnesty International said on Thursday. The reclusive country's network of political prison camps is believed to hold at least 200,000 people and has been the scene of rapes, torture, executions and slave labor, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in January. Analysis of new satellite images of the area near Camp No. 14 in Kaechon shows that the government is "blurring the lines" between its camps and surrounding civilians, Amnesty said.

Six months after the Sept. 11 attacks, several hundred immigrants swept up in the terrorism investigation remain behind bars, some without being charged with a crime, others without an explanation for their detention and many without timely access to legal assistance, a human-rights organization said Thursday. Such conditions, as well as incidents of prolonged periods in solitary confinement, lack of adequate exercise and other allegedly cruel treatment, represent a violation of the detainees' basic rights and deserve further investigation, according to a 40-page report by Amnesty International.

By Salim Muwakkil. Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor at In These Times | April 2, 2001

Why is world's lone superpower so afraid of its own children? The U.S. is one of the only two UN member nations (the other one is Somalia) that have failed to ratify the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child. Why would the U.S. oppose a measure that states "the child by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection?" Well, one reason is that it argues against the new American vogue of trying kids as adults.

Making a forceful defense of America's handling of terrorism detainees, President Bush on Tuesday dismissed the claim of a human-rights group that the United States is operating a network of gulag-style prisons as "an absurd allegation." Bush rejected Amnesty International's contention in its recent annual report of human-rights abuses worldwide and suggested instead that allegations about U.S. mistreatment of detainees are coming from the detainees themselves, "people who hate America."

Were his native country anywhere but Cuba, most Americans would support sending Elian Gonzales, the 6-year-old "little rafter," back home to his biological father. But our national hate affair with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, coupled with a widespread assumption that Elian would be better off here than there, has scrambled the poles on our ethical compasses. Many people may want to deny custody to Elian's father and keep his son in this country. And even those who concede the boy should be returned to his father harbor the misguided notion that this nation offers Elian the best possible future.